the special Skinnarland traffic which had been smuggled into Sweden and then re-routed to London by courier or diplomatic bag. I was allowed access to these files to help me break Skinnarland's indecipherables but until now the only one I'd studied was the file which contained his early messages. I soon realized why they were locked in a safe. There were main-line telegrams from CD to Washington; mainline telegrams to CD from neutral Sweden (our men in Oslo were Munthe, Mitchelson and Binney); and main-line telegrams from Sweden to Wilson and from Wilson to Sweden; there was also a ten-page report from Munthe to Wilson (decoded by Dansey) and an even longer one (encoded by Dansey) from Wilson to Munthe.
All of them were Top Secret. All of them dealt with the same subject: the heavy-water plant, the Norsk Hydro, at Rjukan. SOE's Norwegian directorate had been mounting a massive Intelligence-gathering operation which was astonishing in its breadth and detail:
They knew that in 1941 the Germans had ordered the plant to step up production of heavy water to 10,000 pounds within the next year; they knew how the Germans were planning to transport the heavy water from Norway to Germany; they knew the structure of the plant and its fortifications better than the layout of their own offices; they even knew where the guards were billeted, how many were on duty at any one time and the disposition of the sentries on the suspension bridge between Vermok and Rjukan. All this information had been passed by SOE to the Chiefs of Staff, who put it before Churchill.
The PM immediately asked Professor Lindemann, his chief scientific adviser, for a technical assessment. Professor Lindemann had no doubt at all (he seldom had) that the Germans required this heavy water to produce atomic bombs, atomic rockets and other atomic weapons as yet unknown.
The whole of SOE's information about heavy water flowed from one source: Einar Skinnarland. He was an engineer at the heavy-water plant. He had helped the Norwegians to build it and he was now committed to its destruction.
Sorry Mr Skinnarland, sir. Code with both eyes closed, if you aren't already.
The last document—in many ways the most revealing of all summarized the history of the plant and the extraordinary way in which Skinnarland had been recruited.
The plant and its laboratories had been built before the war on the most isolated spot which the Norwegians could find—the Barren Mountain between Vermok and Rjukan, in the precipice- and glacierbound wilderness of Hardanger Vidda. The Germans invaded Norway in 1940 and at once took over the plant—forcing its Norwegian technicians (including Skinnarland) to continue working there under supervision.
To find out more about the plant and if possible to recruit some of the technicians, SOE dropped Odd Starheim on to a snow-covered field in Norway in December 1941 and left him to find his own way to the Barren Mountain. It was the same Odd Starheim (code-name Cheese) whose previous messages had helped the navy to sink the Bismarck and cripple the Prinz Eugen. In March 1942 Starheim was introduced to Mr Skinnarland by a mutual friend—and it was sabotage at first sight. Skinnarland agreed to come to London with Starheim, bringing all the information he could about the plant and its fortifications.
Since SOE couldn't provide the transport, Starheim hijacked a coastal steamer, ordering the captain at pistol-point to change course for Aberdeen. Starheim had also invited a number of other Norwegians to join him on the 'trip' so that they could be trained by SOE as saboteurs and WT operators. Tomstad sent a message alerting Wilson that Starheim's boat was heading for Scotland and would welcome air cover. The RAF, as ever, obliged.
So did Skinnarland. As soon as he arrived in London he gave Wilson the fullest possible briefing about the plant—and in return was given a twelve-day crash course in the craft of sabotage and the agony of coding. In
All of them were Top Secret. All of them dealt with the same subject: the heavy-water plant, the Norsk Hydro, at Rjukan. SOE's Norwegian directorate had been mounting a massive Intelligence-gathering operation which was astonishing in its breadth and detail:
They knew that in 1941 the Germans had ordered the plant to step up production of heavy water to 10,000 pounds within the next year; they knew how the Germans were planning to transport the heavy water from Norway to Germany; they knew the structure of the plant and its fortifications better than the layout of their own offices; they even knew where the guards were billeted, how many were on duty at any one time and the disposition of the sentries on the suspension bridge between Vermok and Rjukan. All this information had been passed by SOE to the Chiefs of Staff, who put it before Churchill.
The PM immediately asked Professor Lindemann, his chief scientific adviser, for a technical assessment. Professor Lindemann had no doubt at all (he seldom had) that the Germans required this heavy water to produce atomic bombs, atomic rockets and other atomic weapons as yet unknown.
The whole of SOE's information about heavy water flowed from one source: Einar Skinnarland. He was an engineer at the heavy-water plant. He had helped the Norwegians to build it and he was now committed to its destruction.
Sorry Mr Skinnarland, sir. Code with both eyes closed, if you aren't already.
The last document—in many ways the most revealing of all summarized the history of the plant and the extraordinary way in which Skinnarland had been recruited.
The plant and its laboratories had been built before the war on the most isolated spot which the Norwegians could find—the Barren Mountain between Vermok and Rjukan, in the precipice- and glacierbound wilderness of Hardanger Vidda. The Germans invaded Norway in 1940 and at once took over the plant—forcing its Norwegian technicians (including Skinnarland) to continue working there under supervision.
To find out more about the plant and if possible to recruit some of the technicians, SOE dropped Odd Starheim on to a snow-covered field in Norway in December 1941 and left him to find his own way to the Barren Mountain. It was the same Odd Starheim (code-name Cheese) whose previous messages had helped the navy to sink the Bismarck and cripple the Prinz Eugen. In March 1942 Starheim was introduced to Mr Skinnarland by a mutual friend—and it was sabotage at first sight. Skinnarland agreed to come to London with Starheim, bringing all the information he could about the plant and its fortifications.
Since SOE couldn't provide the transport, Starheim hijacked a coastal steamer, ordering the captain at pistol-point to change course for Aberdeen. Starheim had also invited a number of other Norwegians to join him on the 'trip' so that they could be trained by SOE as saboteurs and WT operators. Tomstad sent a message alerting Wilson that Starheim's boat was heading for Scotland and would welcome air cover. The RAF, as ever, obliged.
So did Skinnarland. As soon as he arrived in London he gave Wilson the fullest possible briefing about the plant—and in return was given a twelve-day crash course in the craft of sabotage and the agony of coding. In
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